Baseball Scenarios

[JoeB]

Here are the scenarios for USF Baseball with only three conference games remaining.  First, the standings as of today.  Notice both St. John's and Rutgers still have the regular season title riding on the outcomes of this upcoming weekend's games, USF and Villanova should see each team's best efforts.

2007 STANDINGS

 BIG EAST Overall

 W L T Pct. W L T Pct.

St. John's 18 6 0 .750 36 14 0 .720

Rutgers 18 6 0 .750 33 17 0 .660

Louisville 17 7 0 .708 36 16 0 .692

Pittsburgh 14 9 0 .609 25 23 0 .521

USF 12 12 0 .500 30 22 0 .577

Villanova 11 13 0 .458 26 21 0 .553

Notre Dame 10 13 0 .435 27 24 0 .529

Cincinnati 9 14 0 .391 27 25 0 .519

Connecticut 8 13 0 .381 26 24 0 .520

West Virginia 8 15 0 .348 27 21 0 .562

Seton Hall 7 14 0 .333 22 24 0 .478

Georgetown 7 17 0 .292 19 32 0 .373

 

Through May. 13, 8:59 p.m. ET

With 3 Wins versus St. John's

-  USF clinches 5th place outright in Big East Conference, no help needed

With 2 Wins versus St. John's

-  Would need Villanova to lose one game versus Rutgers to clinch 5th place

With 1 Win versus St. John's

-  Would need Villanova to lose two games versus Rutgers, and Notre Dame to lose 1 game versus UConn to clinch 5th place

With 0 Wins versus St. John's

-  Would need Villanova to lose all three games versus Rutgers, and Notre Dame to lose 2 games versus UConn to clinch 5th place

These are all the ways USF can earn that 5th seed and meet Pitt in the first round of the Big East Baseball Tournament.  Earlier in the year, USF took two out of three games from the Panthers, so this would be the best opponent for USF to play out of the Top 4 teams in conference.  The key in double elimination tourneys is to stay in the winner's bracket as long as possible to save pitchers arms and play less games.  Meeting Pitt in the first round, is the first step in the process.

[JoeB]

The Stetson game tomorrow night is somewhat meaningless now, with so much riding on those three conference games.  It would be nice to win tomorrow, but the weekend games are way more important with the recent struggles of the team.

[Ruger7mmmag]

Basically, the only chance we have of making the NCAAs is to win the BE tourney right?

[JoeB]

Basically, the only chance we have of making the NCAAs is to win the BE tourney right?

I would think so.  We just faltered down the strech too much.  Thats why the 5 seed is so important in my opinion.  It makes the path a bit easier, rather than facing either RU, SJU, or UL in the opening round of the Big East Tourney.

[Ruger7mmmag]

It was good to see them with 30 wins, but really, they need 35 for it really to have been a phenomenal year.  They started hot, but they got hammered down the stretch, then you had the suspensions (why?) and that all robbed them of any "cred" they built early on.  With that being said, it's still a POSITIVE season and I'm proud of the guys and look forward to years to come under the new regime.

The best news is, if they recruit the way I think they are capable of, we should roll this league every year being a Florida team if they can keep FL talent here.  I just don't think the talent of the northern players can hold a candle to the homegrown kids.  I remember when I was in HS (Rutherford HS in Panama City), we used to play the state champs and runner ups from various northern states and we routinely would go 10-2 or so every year as our talent was in another league.  And we were usually only barely ranked in the state and doing this.

If he can pull FL recruits, this conference should be a cakewalk and our nonconference games should start including more heavyweights to get our RPI more respectable.  With the teams we have in state such as Miami, UF, FSU etc, we need to have all of them on the schedule if folks are going to take us seriously or it will be a "win the BE or go home" type scenario every year.

[JoeB]

With Lazer on the staff, I could see getting Miami on the schedule to take the place of say, Georgia Tech.  I think UF will always be a one game situation or possibly two single games.  We'll always have UCF and Stetson as three single games and most likely we'll always have JU on the schedule.  That leaves FSU out in the cold.  I don't see us playing them.  It would have to be a weekend series due to the distance.  Early in the season we'll always play a few Northern teams simply due to their Spring Break being earlier in the year than ours (like this year with High Point, Michigan State, and Quinnipiac).